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OPEN WATER 



OPEN WATER 



BY 

ARTHUR STRINGER 

AUTHOR OF 
"THE WOMAN IN THE RAIN," "IRISH POEMS," ETC. 



NEW YORK — JOHN LANE COMPANY 
LONDON— JOHN LANE— THE BODLEY HEAD 
TORONTO— BELL & COCKBURN— MCMXIV 



Copyright, 19 14. by 
JOHN LANE COMPANY 






Press of J. J. Little & Ives Co. 
New York, U. S. A. 



OCT 15 1914 

CI.A387013 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

A Foreword 9 

Milkweed . , 21 

Home Thoughts 23 

Life 24 

Some Day, Oh Seeker of Dreams 26 

Black Hours 28 

Before Renewal 30 

Hill-Top Hours 33 

Letters from Home 34 

Chains 37 

The Drums 39 

An^sthesla 41 

A Summer Night 43 

Sappho's Tomb 44 

V 



vi CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The Wild Swans Pass 49 

At Notre Dame 51 

The Pilot 54 

Doors 56 

Spring Floods 58 

The Turn of the Year 61 

If I Love You 62 

What Shall I Care? 64 

Hunter and Hunted 66 

Apple Blossoms 68 

The House of Life 69 

Ultimata 70 

The Life on the Table 75 

You Bid Me to Sleep 76 

The Last of Summer 78 

At Charing Cross 80 

Prescience 82 

The Steel Workers 84 

The Children 86 



CONTENTS vu 

PAGE 

The Nocturne 88 

The Wild Geese 90 

The Day 92 

The Revolt 94 

Atavism 97 

March Twilight 99 

The Echo loi 

Autumn 103 

Faces 104 

There Is Strength in the Soil 107 

Life-Drunk 108 

My Heart Stood Empty no 

One Night in the Northwest iii 

Dreamers 112 

The Question 114 

The Gift of Hate 116 

The Dream 118 

One Room in My Heart 120 

The Meaning 121 



viii CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The Veil 122 

The Man of Dreams 124 

April on the Rlvlto 125 

The Surrender 127 

The Passing 128 

Protestations 130 

I Sat in the Sunlight 132 



A FOREWORD 

To even the casual reader of poetry who may 
chance to turn to the following pages it will be 
evident that the lyrics contained therein have been 
written without what is commonly known as end- 
rhyme. It may also be claimed by this reader that 
the lyrics before him are without rhythm. As 
such, it may at first seem that they mark an effort 
in revolt against two of the primary assets of 
modern versification. 

All art, of course, has its ancestry. While it 
is the duty of poetry both to remember and to 
honour its inherited grandeurs, the paradoxical 
fact remains that even this most convention-rid- 
den medium of emotional expression is a sort of 
warfare between the embattled soul of the artist, 
seeking articulation, and the immuring traditions 
with which time and the prosodian have sur- 
rounded him. 

In painting and in music, as in sculpture and 
9 



10 OPEN WATER 

the drama, there has been a movement of late to 
achieve what may be called formal emancipation, 
a struggle to break away from the restraints and 
the technical obligations imposed upon the worker 
by his artistic predecessors. In one case this 
movement may be called Futurism, and in an- 
other it may be termed Romanticism, but the ten- 
dency is the same. The spirit of man is seen in 
rebellion against a form that has become too in- 
tricate or too fixed to allow him freedom of utter- 
ance. 

Poetry alone, during the last century, seems 
to have remained stable, in the matter of struc- 
ture. Few new forms have been invented, and 
with one or two rare exceptions success has been 
achieved through ingeniously elaborating on an 
already established formula and through meticu- 
lously re-echoing what has already been said. 
This has resulted, on the one hand, in a technical 
dexterity which often enough resembles the 
strained postures of acrobatism, and, on the other, 
in that constantly reiterated complaint as to the 
hollo wness and aloofness of modern poetry. Yet 
this poetry is remote and insincere, not because 
the modern spirit is incapable of feeling, but be- 



A FOREWORD II 

cause what the singer of to-day has felt has not 
been directly and openly expressed. His apparel 
has remained mediaeval. He must still don mail 
to face Mausers, and wear chain-armour against 
machine-guns. He must scout through the shad- 
owy hinterlands of consciousness in attire that 
may be historic, yet at the same time is distress- 
ingly conspicuous. And when he begins his as- 
sault on those favouring moments or inspirational 
moods which lurk in the deeper valleys and by- 
ways of sensibility, he must begin it as a marked 
man, pathetically resplendent in that rigid steel 
which is an anachronism and no longer an ar- 
mour. 

Rhyme, from the first, has been imposed upon 
him. His only escape from rhyme has been the 
larger utterance of blank verse. Yet the iambic 
pentameter of his native tongue, perfected in the 
sweeping sonority of the later Shakespearean 
tragedies and left even more intimidatingly aus- 
tere in the organ-like roll of Milton, has been 
found by the later singer to be ill-fitted for the 
utterance of those more intimate moods and those 
subjective experiences which may be described 
as characteristically modern. Verse, in the na- 



12 OPEN WATER 

ture of things, has become less epic and racial, 
and more and more lyric and personal. The 
poet, consequently, has been forced back into the 
narrower domain so formally and so rigidly 
fenced in by rhyme. .And before touching on the 
limitations resulting from this incarceration, it 
may be worth while to venture a brief glance 
back over the history of what Milton himself 
denominated as "the jingling sounds of like end- 
ings" and Goldsmith characterized as "a vile 
monotony" and even Howells has spoken of as 
"the artificial trammels of verse." 

It has been claimed that those early poets of 
Palestine who affected the custom of beginning a 
number of lines or stanzas with the same letter 
of the alphabet unconsciously prepared the way 
for that latter-day ornamental fringe known as 
end-rhyme. Others have claimed that this in- 
sistence of a consonance of terminals is a relique 
of the communal force of the chant, where the 
clapping of hands, the stamping of feet, or the 
twanging of bow-strings marked the period-ends 
of prehistoric recitative. The bow-string of 
course, later evolved into the musical instrument, 
and when poetry became a written as well as a 



A FOREWORD 13 

Spoken language the consonantal drone of rhym- 
ing end- words took the place of the discarded in- 
strument which had served to mark a secondary 
and wider rhythm in the progress of impassioned 
recitative. 

It must be admitted, however, even in the face 
of this ingenious pleading, that rhyme is a much 
more modern invention than it seems. That it is 
not rudimentary in the race is evidenced by the 
fact that many languages, such as the Celtic, the 
Teutonic, and the Scandinavian, are quite without 
it. The Greeks, even in their melic poetry, 
saw no need for it. The same may be said 
of the Romans, though with them it will 
occasionally be found that the semi-feet of 
the pentameter constitute what may be called 
accidental rhyme. Rhyming Latin verse, in- 
deed, does not come into existence until the 
end of the fourth century, and it is not until the 
time of the Conquest that end-rhyme becomes in 
any way general in English song. Layman, in 
translating Wace's Le Brut d'Angleterre, found 
the original work written in rhymed lines, and in 
following that early model produced what is prob- 
ably the first rhymed poem written in England. 



14 OPEN WATER 

With the introduction of end-rhymes came the 
discovery that a decoration so formal could con- 
vert verse into something approaching the archi- 
tectural. It gave design to the lyric. With this 
new definiteness of outline, of course, came a 
newer rigidity of medium. Form was acknowl- 
edged as the visible presentation of this particu- 
lar art. Formal variations became a matter of 
studious attention. Efforts were made to leave 
language in itself instrumental, and in these ef- 
forts sound frequently comes perilously near 
triumphing over sense. The exotic formal 
growths of other languages were imported into 
England. No verbal tour de force of troubadour 
or troiivere or jongleur or Ronsardist was too 
fantastic for imitation and adoption. The one- 
time primitive directness of English was over- 
run by such forms as the ballade, the chant royal, 
the rondel, the kyrielle, the rondeau and the ron- 
deau redouble, the virelai and the pantoum, the 
sestina, the villanelle, and last, yet by no means 
least, the sonnet. But through the immense tan- 
gle of our intricate lyric growths it can now be 
seen that mere mechanics do not always make 
poetry. While rhyme has, indeed, served its 



A FOREWORD 15 

limited purposes, it must be remembered that the 
highest EngHsh verse has been written without 
rhyme. This verbal embroidery, while it presents 
to the workman in words a pleasingly decorative 
form, at the same time imposes on him both an 
adventitious restraint and an increased self-con- 
sciousness. The twentieth century poet, singing 
with his scrupulously polished vocalisation, usu- 
ally finds himself content to re-echo what has 
been said before. He is unable to "travel light" ; 
pioneering with so heavy a burden is out of the 
question. Rhyme and meter have compelled him 
to sacrifice content for form. It has left him in- 
capable of what may be called abandonment. And 
the consciousness of his technical impedimenta 
has limited the roads along which he may adven- 
ture. His preoccupation with formal exactions 
has implanted in him an instinctive abhorrence 
for anything beyond the control of what he calls 
common-sense. Dominated by this emotional and 
intellectual timidity, he has attributed to end- 
rhyme and accentual rhythm the self-sufficiency 
of mystic rites, in the face of the fact that the 
fewer the obstacles between feeling and expres- 
sion the richer the literary product must be, and 



l6 OPEN WATER 

forgetting, too, that poetry represents the ex- 
treme vanguard of consciousness both adventur- 
ing and pioneering along the path of future pro- 
gress. 

For the poet to turn his back on rhythm, as at 
times he has been able to do with rhyme, is an 
impossibility. For the rhythmising instinct is in- 
nate and persistent in man, standing for a law 
which permeates every manifestation of energy. 
The great heart of Nature itself beats with a 
regular systole and diastole. But, rhythmically, 
the modem versifier has been a Cubist without 
quite comprehending it. He has been viewing the 
world mathematically. He has been crowding 
his soul into a geometrically designed mould. He 
has bowed to a rule-of -thumb order of speech, 
arbitrarily imposed on him by an ancestry which 
wrung its ingenuous pleasure out of an ingenuous 
regularity of stress and accent. To succeed under 
that law he must practise an adroit form of self- 
deception, solemnly pretending to fit his lines to 
a mould which he actually over-runs and oc- 
casionally ignores. He has not been satisfied with 
the rhythm of Nature, whose heart-beats in their 
manifold expressions are omnipresent but never 



A FOREWORD 17 

confined to any single sustained pulse or any one 
limited movement. It is not argued that he 
should ignore rhythm altogether. To do so, as 
has already been said, would be impossible, since 
life itself is sustained by the rise and fall of mor- 
tal breasts and the beat and throb of mortal 
hearts. Rhythm is in man's blood. The ear of 
the world instinctively searches for cadences. The 
poet's efforts towards symphonic phrasing have 
long since become habitual and imperative. But 
that he should confine himself to certain man- 
made laws of meter, that he should be shackled 
by the prosodian of the past, is quite another 
matter. His predecessors have fashioned many 
rhythms that are pretty, many accentual forms 
that are cunningly intricate, but at a time when 
his manner of singing has lost its vital swing it 
is well for man to forget these formal pretti- 
nesses and equally well to remember that poetry 
is not an intellectual exercise but the immortal 
soul of perplexed mortality seeking expression. 
To abandon fixed rhythm, or meter, for the 
floating rhythm of the chant may not be an im- 
mediate solution of the problem. To follow the 
Psalms of David, for example, will not suddenly 



i8 



OPEN WATER 



conjure a new school of verse into the world. 
But to return to the more open movement of the 
chant, which is man's natural and rudimentary 
form of song, may constitute a step towards free- 
dom. The mere effort towards emancipation, in 
fact, is not without its value. It may serve to 
impress on certain minds the fact that poetry is 
capable of exhausting one particular form of ex- 
pression, of incorporating and consuming one 
particular embodiment of perishable matter and 
passing on to its newer fields. Being a living or- 
ganism, it uses up what lies before it, and to find 
new vigour must forever feed on new forms. Be- 
ing the product of man's spirit, which is forever 
subject to change, verse must not be worshipped 
for what it has been, but for what it is capable 
of being. No necrophilic regard for its estab- 
lished conventions must blind the lover of beauti- 
ful verse to the fact that the primary function of 
poetry is both to intellectualize sensation and to 
elucidate emotional experience. If man must 
worship beauty only as he has known it in the 
past, man must be satisfied with worshipping that 
which has lived and now is dead. 

A. S. 



OPEN WATER 



MILKWEED 

I 

The blue, blue sea, 

And the drone of waves. 

And the wheeling swallows. 

And the sun on the opal sails. 

And the misty and salt-bleached headlands, 

And the milkweed thick at my feet. 

And the milkweed held in the hand of a child 

Who dreams on the misty cliff-edge. 

Watching the fading sails 

And the noonday blue 

Of the lonely sea! 

II 

Was it all years ago. 

Or was it but yesterday? 

21 



22 OPEN WATER 

I only know that the scent 

Of the milkweed brings it back, 

Back with a strangle of tears : 

The child and the misty headlands, 

The drone of the dark blue sea, 

And the opal sails 

In the sun! 



HOME THOUGHTS 

I AM tired of the dust 

And the fever and noise 

And the meaningless faces of men; 

And I want to go home! 

Oh, day after day I get thinking of home 

Where the black firs fringe the skyline, 

And the birds wheel down the silence, 

And the hemlocks whisper peace, 

And the hill-winds cool the blood. 

And the dusk is crowned with glory, 

And the lone horizon softens, 

And the world's at home with God ! 

Oh, I want to go there ! 

/ want to go home! 

23 



LIFE 

A RIND of light hangs low 

On the rim of the world ; 

A sound of feet disturbs 

The quiet of the cell 

Where a rope and a beam looms high 

At the end of the yard. 

But in the dusk 

Of that walled yard waits a woman; 

And as the thing from its cell, 

Still guarded and chained and bound, 

Crosses that little space, 

Silent, for ten brief steps, 

A woman hangs on his neck. 
24 



LIFE 25 

And that walk from a cell to a sleep 

Is known as Life, 

And those ten dark steps 

Of tangled rapture and tears 

Men still call Love. 



SOME DAY, O SEEKER OF DREAMS 

Some day, O Seeker of Dreams, they will seek 

even us ! 
Some day they will wake, Fellow Singer, and 

hunger and want 
For the Ways to the Lonelier Height ! 
So let us. Shy Weaver of Beauty, take heart. 
For out of their dust they will call to us yet! 
Let us wait, and sing, and be wise, 
As the sea has waited and sung, 
As the hills through the night have been wise ! 
For we are the Bringers of Light, and the Voices 

of Love, 

Aye, we are the Soothers of Pain, the Appeasers 

of Death, 
26 



SOME DAY^ O SEEKER OF DREAMS 2/ 

The Dusk and the Star and the Gleam and the 

Lonehest Peak! 
And when they have found and seen, and know 

not whither they trend, 
They will come to us, crying aloud like a child 

in the night; 
And when they have learned of our lips, 
Still back to our feet they will grope 
For that ultimate essence and core of all song. 
To usher them empty and naked, then, out to the 

unanswering stars, 
Where Silence and Dreaming and Music are one ! 



BLACK HOURS 

I HAVE drunk deep 

Of the well of bitterness. 

Black hours have harried me, 

Blind fate has bludgeoned my bent head, 

And on my brow the iron crown 

Of sorrow has been crushed. 

And being mortal, I have cried aloud 

At anguish ineluctable. 

But over each black hour has hung 

Forlorn this star of knowledge : 

The path of pain too great to be endured 

Leads always unto peace; 

And when the granite road of anguish mounts 
28 



BLACK HOURS 29 



Up and still up to its one ultimate 
And dizzy height of torture, 
Softly it dips and meets 
The valley of endless rest! 



BEFORE RENEWAL 

Summer is dead. 

And love is gone. 

And life is glad of this. 

For sad were both, with having given much ; 

And bowed were both, with great desires fulfilled ; 

And both were grown too sadly wise 

Ever to live again. 

Too aged with hours o'er-passionate, 

Too deeply sung by throats 

That took no thought of weariness. 

Moving too madly toward the crest of things, 

Giving too freely of the fountaining sap. 

Crowding too gladly into grass and leaves, 
30 



BEFORE RENEWAL 31 

Breathing too blindly into flower and song! 

Again the lyric hope may thrill the world, 

Again the sap may sweeten into leaves, 

Again will grey-eyed April come 

With all her choiring throats; 

But not to-day — 

For the course is run^ 

And the cruse is full, 

And the loin ungirt, 

And the hour ordained! 

And now there is need of rest; 

And need of renewal there is ; 

And need of silence, 

And need of sleep. 

Too clear the light 

Now lies on hill and valley; 



32 OPEN WATER 

And little is left to say, 
And nothing is left to give. 
Summer is dead; 
And love is gone! 



HILL-TOP HOURS 

I AM through with regret. 

No more shall I kennel with pain. 

I have called to this whimpering soul, 

This soul that is sodden with tears 

And sour with the reek of the years! 

And now we shall glory in light! 

Like a tatter of sail in the wind, 

Like a tangle of net on the sand. 

Like a hound stretched out in the heat, 

My soul shall lie in the sun. 

And be drowsy with peace, 

And not think of the past! 

33 



LETTERS FROM HOME 

Letters from Home, you said. 

Unopened they lay on the shack-sill 

As you stared with me at the prairie 

And the foothills bathed with light. 

Letters from Home, you whispered, 

And the homeland casements shone 

Through the homeland dusk again, 

And the sound of the birds came back, 

And the soft green sorrowing hills. 

And the sigh of remembered names, 

The wine of remembered youth, — 

Oh, these came back, 
34 



LETTERS FROM HOME 35 

Back with those idle words 

Of 'Tetters from Home"! 

« 

Over such desolate leagues, 

Over such sundering seas, 

Out of the lost dead years. 

After the days of waiting, 

After the ache had died, 

After the brine of failure, 

After the outland peace 

Of the trail that never turns back, 

Now that the night-wind whispers 

How Home shall never again be home, 

And now that the arms of the Far-away 

Have drawn us close to its breast, 

Out of the dead that is proved not dead. 

To waken the sorrow that should have died,, 



3^ OPEN WATER 

To tighten the throat that never shall sing, 
To sadden the trails that we still must ride, 
Too late they come to us here — 
Our Letters from Home! 



CHAINS 

I WATCHED the men at work on the stubborn 

rock, 
But mostly the one man poised on a drill 
Above the steam that hissed and billowed about 

him 
White in the frosty air, 
Where the lordly house would stand. 

Majestic, muscular, high like a god. 

He stood, 

And controlled and stopped 

And started his thundering drill. 

Offhand and careless and lordly as Thor, 

37 



3^ OPEN WATER 

Begrimed and solemn and crowned with sweat, 
Where the great steel chains swung over the 
buckets of rock. 

Then out of a nearby house came a youth, 

All gloved and encased in fur and touched with 

content. 
Thin-shouldered and frail and finished, 
Leading a house-dog out on a silver chain. 
He peered at the figure that fought with the 

drill 
Above the billowing steam and tumult of sound. 
Peered up for a moment impassive, 
With almost pitying eyes. 
And then went pensively down the Avenue's 

calm, 
In the clear white light of the noonday sun, 
Not holding, but held by his silvery chain ! 



THE DRUMS 

A VILLAGE wrapped in slumber, 

Silent between the hills, 

Empty of moon-lit marketplace. 

Empty of moving life — 

Such is my quiet heart. 

Shadowy-walled it rests. 

Sleeping its heavy sleep; 

But sudden across the dark 

Tingles a sound of drums! 

The drums, the drums, the distant drums. 

The throb of the drums strikes up. 

The beat of the drums awakes! 

Then loud through the little streets, 

39 



40 OPEN WATER 

And strange to the startled roofs, 

The drums, the drums approach and pound, 

And throb and clamour and thrill and pass, 

And between the echoing house-walls 

All swart and grim they go, 

The battalions of regret. 

After the drums, the valiant drums 

That die away in the night ! 



ANESTHESIA 

I CAUGHT the smell of ether 
From the glass-roofed room 
Where the hospital stood. 
Suddenly all about me 
I felt a mist of anguish 
And the old, old hour of dread 
When Death had shambled by. 

Yellow with time it is, 
This letter on which I look; 
But up from it comes a perfume 
That stabs me still to the heart; 
And suddenly, at the odour, 



41 



42 OPEN WATER 

Through a ghost-hke mist I know 
Rapture and love and wild regret 
When Life, and You, went by. 



A SUMMER NIGHT 

Mournful the summer moon 

Rose from the quiet sea. 

Golden and sad and full of regret 

As though it would ask of eartl 

Where all her lovers had vanished 

And whither had gone the rose-red lips 

That had sighed to her light of old. 

Then I caught a pulse of music, 

Brokenly, out at the pier-end, 

And I heard the voices of girls 

Going home in the dark, 

Laughing along the sea-wall 

Over a lover's word! 

43 



SAPPHO'S TOMB 

I 

In an old and ashen island, 
Beside a city grey with death, 
They are seeking Sappho's tomb! 

II 

Beneath a vineyard ruinous 

And a broken-columned temple 

They are delving where she sleeps! 

There between a lonely valley 

Filled with noonday silences 

And the headlands of soft violet 

Where the sapphire seas still whisper, 
44 



Sappho's tomb 45 

Whisper with her sigh; 
Through a country sad with wonder 
Men are seeking vanished Sappho, 
Men are searching for the tomb 
Of muted Song! 

Ill 
They will find a Something there, 
In a cavern where no sound is, 
In a room of milky marble 
Walled with black amphibolite 
Over-scored with faded words 
And stained with time! 

IV 

Sleeping in a low-roofed chamber, 
With her phials of perfume round her, 
In a terra-cotta coffin 



46 OPEN WATER 

With her image on the cover, 
Childish echo of her beauty 
Etched in black and gold barbaric — 
Lift it slowly, slowly, seekers, 
Or your search will end in dust ! 

V 

With a tiny nude Astarte, 

Bright with gilt and gravely watching 

Over grass-green malachite, 

Over rubies pale, and topaz, 

And the crumbled dust of pearls 1 

VI 

With her tarnished silver mirror, 
With her rings of beaten gold, 
With her robes of faded purple, 
And the stylus that so often 



SAPPHO's TOMB 47 

Traced the azure on her eyehds, — 

Eyehds delicate and weary, 

Drooping, over-wise! 

And at her head will be a plectron 

Made of ivory, worn with time, 

And a flute and gilded lyre 

Will be found beside her feet, 

And two little yellow sandals. 

And crude serpents chased in silver 

On her ankle rings — 

And a cloud of drifting dust 

All her shining hair! 

VII 

In that lost and lonely tomb 

They may find her ; 

Find the arms that ached with rapture, 



48 OPEN WATER 

Softly folded on a breast 
That for evermore is silent; 
Find the eyes no longer wistful, 
Find the lips no longer singing, 
And the heart, so hot and wayward 
When that ashen land was young, 
Cold through all the mists of time. 
Cold beneath the Lesbian marble 
In the low-roofed room 
That drips with tears! 



THE WILD SWANS PASS 

In the dead of the night 
You turned in your troubled sleep 
As you heard the wild swans pass ; 
And then you slept again. 

You slept — 

While a new world swam beneath 

That army of eager wings, 

While plainland and slough and lake 

Lay wide to those outstretched throats, 

While the far lone Lights allured 

That phalanx of passionate breasts. 

And I who had loved you more 

Than a homing bird loves flight, — 

49 



50 OPEN WATER 

I watched with an ache for freedom, 
I rose with a need for life, 
Knowing that love had passed 
Into its unknown North ! 



AT NOTRE DAME 

I 

O ODOUR of incense, pride of purple and gold, 

Burst of music and praise, and passion of flute 
and pipe! 

O voices of silver o'er-sweet, and soothing an- 
tiphonal chant ! 

O Harmony, ancient, ecstatic, a-throb to the echo- 
ing roof, 

With tremulous roll of awakened reverberant 
tubes, and thunder of sound ! 

And illusion of mystical song and outclangour of 

jubilant bell, 

51 



52 OPEN WATER 

And glimmer of gold and taper, and throbbing, 
insistent pipe — 

If song and emotion and music were all — 

Were it only all! 

II 

For see, dark heart of mine, 
^ How the singers have ceased and gone! 

See, how all of the music is lost and the lights are 
low, 

And how, as our idle arms, these twin ineloquent 
towers 

Grope up through the old inaccessible Night to 
His stars I 

How in vain we have stormed on the bastions of 
Silence with sound! 

How in vain with our music and song and emo- 
tion assailed the Unknown, 



AT NOTRE DAME 53 

How beat with the wings of our worship on 

Earth's imprisoning bars ! 
For the pinions of Music have wearied, the proud 

loud tubes have tired, 
Yet still grim and taciturn stand His immutable 

stars, 
And, lost in the gloom, to His frontiers old I turn 
Where glimmer those sentinel fires. 
Beyond which, Dark Heart, we two 
Some night must steal us forth, 
Quite naked, and alone! 



THE PILOT 

I LOUNGE on the deck of the river-steamer, 
Homeward bound with its load, 
Churning from headland to headland. 
Through moonlight and silence and dusk. 
And the decks are alive with laughter and music 

and singing, 
And I see the forms of the sleepers 
And the shadowy lovers that lean so close to the 

rail, 

And the romping children behind, 

And the dancers amidships. 

But high above us there in the gloom, 

Where the merriment breaks like a wave at his 

feet, 
54 



THE PILOT 55 

Unseen of lover and dancer and me, 
Is the Pilot, impassive and stern, 
With his grim eyes watching the course. 



DOORS 
Listen I 

Footsteps 

Are they, 

That falter through the gloom, 

That echo through the lonely chambers 

Of our house of life? 

Listen ! 

Did a door close? 

Did a whisper waken? 

Did a ghostly something 

Sigh across the dusk ? 

From the mournful silence 

Something, something went! 
56 



DOORS 57 

Far down some shadowy passage 
Faintly closed a door — 
And O how empty lies 
Our house of life! 



SPRING FLOODS 

You stood alone 

In the dusky window, 

Watching the racing river. 

Touched with a vague unrest, 

And if tired of loving too much 

More troubled at heart to find 

That the flame of love could wither 

And the wonder of love could pass. 

You kneeled at the window-ledge 

And stared through the black-topped maples 

Where an April robin fluted, — 

Stared idly out 

At the flood-time sweep of the river, 

58 



SPRING FLOODS 59 

Silver and paling gold 

In the ghostly April twilight. 

Shadowy there in the dusk 
You watched with shadowy eyes 
The racing, sad, unreasoning 
Hurrying torrent of silver 
Seeking its far-off sea. 
Faintly I heard you sigh, 
And faintly I heard the robin's flute, 
And faintly from rooms remote 
Came a broken murmur of voices. 
And life, for a breath, stood bathed 
In a wonder crowned with pain, 
And immortal the moment hung ; 
And I know that the thought of you 
There at the shadowy window, 



60 OPEN WATER 

And the matted black of the maples, 
And the sunset call of a bird, 
And the sad wide reaches of silver, 
Will house in my haunted heart 
Till the end of Time! 



THE TURN OF THE YEAR 

The pines shake and the winds wake, 
And the dark waves crowd the sky-Hne ! 
The birds wheel out on a troubled sky ; 
The widening road runs white and long, 
And the page is turned. 
And the world is tired! 

So I want no more of twilight sloth. 

And I want no more of resting. 

And of all the earth I ask no more 

Than the green sea, the great sea. 

The long road, the white road. 

And a change of life to-day! 

6i 



IF I LOVE YOU 

If I love you, woman of rose 

And warmth and wondering eyes, 

If it so fall out 

That you are the woman I choose, 

Oh, what is there left to say, 

And what should it matter to me, 

Or what can it mean to you? 

For under the two white breasts 

And the womb that makes you woman 

The call of the ages whispers 

And the countless ghosts awaken, 

And stronger than sighs and weeping 
62 



IF I LOVE YOU 63 

The urge that makes us one, 

And older than hate or loving or shame 

This want that builds the world! 



WHAT SHALL I CARE? 

What shall I care for the ways 

Of these idle and thin-flanked women in silk 

And the lisping men-shadows that trail at their 

heels ? 

What are they worth in my world 

Or the world that I want, 

These flabby-armed, indolent, delicate women 

And these half -women daring to call themselves 

men 

Yet afraid to get down to the earth 

And afraid of the wind, 

Afraid of the truth. 

And so sadly afraid of themselves? 
64 



WHAT SHALL I CARE? 65 

How can they help me in trouble and death? 

How can they keep me from hating my kind? 

Oh, 'I want to get out of their coffining rooms, 

I want to walk free with a man, 

A man who has lived and dared 

And swung through the cycle of life! 

God give me a man for a friend 

To the End, 

Give me a man with his heel on the neck of 

Hate, 
With his fist in the face of Death, 
A man not fretted with womanish things, 
Unafraid of the light. 
Of the worm in the lip of a corpse. 
Unafraid of the call from the cell of his heart, — 
God give me a man for friend ! 



HUNTER AND HUNTED 

I 

When the sun is high, 

And the hills are happy with light, 

Then virile and strong I am! 

Then ruddy with life I fare, 

The fighter who feels no dread, 

The roamer who knows no bounds, 

The hunter who makes the world his prey, 

And shouting and swept with pride, 

Still mounts to the lonelier height! 

II 

In the cool of the day, 

When the huddling shadows swarm, 
66 



HUNTER AND HUNTED 67 

And the ominous eyes look out 

And night slinks over the swales 

And the silence is chill with death, 

Then I am the croucher beside the coals, 

The lurker within the shadowy cave. 

Who listens and mutters a charm 

And trembles and waits, 

A hunted thing grown 

Afraid of the hunt, 

A silence enisled in silence, 

A wonder enwrapped in awe! 



APPLE BLOSSOMS 

I SAW a woman stand 

Under the seas of bloom, 

Under the waves of colour and light, 

The showery snow and rose of the odorous trees 

That made a glory of earth. 

She stood where the petals fell, 

And her hands were on her breast. 

And her lips were touched with wonder. 

And her eyes were full of pain — 

For pure she was, and young. 

And it was Spring! 



6^ 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE 

Quietly I closed the door. 

Then I said to my soul : 

*T shall never come back, 

Back to this haunted room 

Where Sorrow and I have slept." 

I turned from that hated door 

And passed through the House of Life, 

Through its ghostly rooms and glad 

And its corridors dim with age. 

Then lightly I crossed a threshold 

Where the casements showed the sun 

And I entered an unknown room, — 

And my heart went cold. 

For about me stood that Chamber of Pain 



I had thought to see no more ! 



•t> 



69 



ULTIMATA 

I AM desolate, 

Desolate because of a woman. 

When at midnight walking alone 

I look up at the slow-wheeling stars, 

I see only the eyes of this woman. 

In bird-haunted valleys and by-ways secluded, 

Where once I sought peace, 

I find now only unrest 

And this one unaltering want. 

When the dawn-wind stirs in the pine-tops 

I hear only her voice's whisper. 

When by day I gaze into the azure above me 

I see only the face of this woman. 

In the sunlight I cannot find comfort, 
70 



ULTIMATA 71 

Nor can I find peace in the shadows. 

Neither can I take joy in the hill- wind, 

Nor find solace on kindlier breasts ; 

For deep in the eyes of all women I watch 

I see only her eyes stare back. 

Nor can I shut the thought of her out of my 

heart 
And the ache for her out of my hours. 
Ruthlessly now she invades even my dreams 
And wounds me in sleep; 
And my body cries out for her, 
Early and late and forever cries out for her, 
And her alone, — 
And I want this woman! 

I am sick at heart because of this woman; 
I am lost to shame because of my want; 



72 OPEN WATER 

And mine own people have come to mean naught 

to me; ^ 

And with many about me still am I utterly alone, 
And quite solitary now I take my way 
Where men are intent on puny things 
And phantasmal legions pace! 
And a wearisome thing is life, 
And forever the shadow of this one woman 
Is falling across my path. 
The turn in the road is a promise of her. 
The twilight is thronged with her ghosts; 
The grasses speak only of her, 
The leaves whisper her name forever; 
The odorous fields are full of her. 
Her lips, I keep telling myself. 
Are a cup from which I must drink; 



ULTIMATA 73 

Her breast is the one last pillow- 
Whereon I may ever find peace! 
Yet she has not come to me, 
And being denied her, everything stands denied, 
And all men who have waited in vain for love 
Cry out through my desolate heart; 
And the want of the hungering world 
Runs like fire through my veins 
And bursts from my throat in the cry 
That I want this woman! 

I am possessed of a great sickness 
And likewise possessed of a great strength, 
And the ultimate hour has come. 
I will arise and go unto this woman. 
And wnth bent head and my arms about her 
knees 



74 OPEN WATER 

I shall say unto her: ^'Beloved beyond all 

words, 
Others have sought your side, 
And many have craved your kiss, 
But none, O body of flesh and bone, 
Has known a hunger like mine! 
And though evil befall, or good, 
This hunger is given to me, 
And is now made known to you, — • 
For I must die. 
Or you must die. 
Or Desire must die 
This night!" 



THE LIFE ON THE TABLE 

In" the white-walled room 

Where the white bed waits 

Stand banks of meaningless flowers; 

In the rain-swept street 

Are a ghost-like row of cabs; 

And along the corridor-dusk 

Phantasmal feet repass. 

Through the warm, still air 

The odour of ether hangs; 

And on this slenderest thread 

Of one thin pulse 

Hangs and swings 

The hope of life — 

The life of her 

I love! 



75 



YOU BID ME TO SLEEP 

You bid me to sleep, — 

But why, O Daughter of Beauty, 

Was beauty thus born in the world? 

Since out of these shadowy eyes 

The wonder shall pass! 

And out of this surging and passionate breast 

The dream shall depart! 

And out of these delicate rivers of warmth 

The fire shall wither and fail ! 

And youth like a bird from your body shall fly! 



And Time like a fang on your flesh shall feed 

And this perilous bosom that pulses with love 

Shall go down to the dust from which it arose,— 

Yet Daughter of Beauty, close, 
76 



YOU BID ME TO SLEEP 77 

Close to its sumptuous warmth 
You hold my sorrowing head, 
And smile with shadowy eyes, 
And bid me to sleep again! 



THE LAST OF SUMMER 

The opal afternoon 

Is cool, and very still. 

A wash of tawny air, 

Sea-green that melts to gold, 

Bathes all the skyline, hill by hill. 

Out of the black-topped pinelands 

A black crow calls, 

And the year seems old! 

A woman from a doorway sings, 

And from the valley-slope a sheep-dog barks, 

And through the umber woods the echo falls. 

Then silence on the still world lies, 
78 



THE LAST OF SUMMER 79 

And faint and far the birds fly south, 
And behind the dark pines drops the sun, 
And a small wind wakes and sighs, 
And Summer, see, is done! 



AT CHARING-CROSS 

Alone amid the Rockies I have stood ; 

Alone across the prairie's midnight calm 

Full often I have fared 

And faced the hushed infinity of night; 

Alone I have hung poised 

Between a quietly heaving sea 

And quieter sky, 

Aching with isolation absolute; 

And in Death's Valley I have walked alone 

And sought in vain for some appeasing sign 

Of life or movement, 

While over-desolate my heart called out 

For some befriending face 

Or some assuaging voice! 
80 



AT CHARING-CROSS 8l 

But never on my soul has weighed 
Such lonehness as this, 
As here amid the seething London tides 
I look upon these ghosts that come and go, 
These swarming restless souls innumerable, 
Who through their million-footed dirge of un- 
concern 
Must know and nurse the thought of kindred 

ghosts 
As lonely as themselves, 
Or else go mad with it! 



PRESCIENCE 

I 

**The sting of it all," you said, as you stooped 

low over your roses, 
*The worst of it is, when I think of Death, 
That Spring by Spring the Earth shall still be 

beautiful, 
And Summer by Summer be lovely again, 
— And I shall be gone!" 

II 

"I would not care, perhaps," you said, watching 

your roses, 

*'If only 'twere dust and ruin and emptiness left 

behind ! 
82 



PRESCIENCE 83 

But the thought that Earth and April 
Year by casual year 

Shall waken around the old ways, soft and beau- 
tiful, 
Year by year when I am away, 
— This, this breaks my heart!" 



THE STEEL WORKERS 

I WATCHED the workers in steel, 

The Pit-Hke glow of the furnace, 

The rivers of molten metal, 

The tremulous rumble of cranes, 

The throb of the Thor-like hammers 

On sullen and resonant anvils! 

I saw the half -clad workers 

Twisting earth's iron to their use. 

Shaping the steel to their thoughts; 

And, in some way, out of the fury 

And the fires of mortal passion. 

It seemed to me, 
84 



THE STEEL WORKERS 

In some way, out of the torture 
And tumult of inchoate Time, 
The hammer of sin is shaping 
The soul of man! 



THE CHILDREN 

The city is old in sin, 

And children are not for cities, 

And, wan-eyed woman, you want them not, 

You say with a broken laugh. 

Yet out of each wayward softness of voice. 

And each fulness of breast. 

And each flute-throated echo of song. 

Each flutter of lace and quest of beautiful things. 

Each coil of entangling hair built into its crown. 

Each whisper and touch in the silence of night. 

Each red unreasoning mouth that is lifted to 

mouth, 
86 



THE CHILDREN 87 

Each whiteness of brow that is furrowed no more 

with thought, 
Each careless soft curve of hps that can never 

explain, 
Arises the old and the inappeasable cry ! 
Every girl who leans from a tenement sill 
And flutters a hand to a youth, 
Every woman who waits for a man in the dusk, 
Every harlotous arm flung up to a drunken heel 
That would trample truth down in the dust, 
Reaches unknowingly out for its own, 
And blind to its heritage waits 
For its child! 



THE NOCTURNE 
Remote^ in some dim room, 
On this dark April morning soft with rain, 
I hear her pensive touch 
Fall aimless on the keys. 
And stop, and play again. 

And as the music wakens 

And the shadowy house is still. 

How all my troubled soul cries out 

For things I know not of! 

Ah, keen the quick chords fall, 

And weighted with regret, 

Fade through the quiet rooms ; 
88 



THE NOCTURNE 89 

And warm as April rain 
The strange tears fall, 
And life in some way seems 
Too deep to bear ! 



THE WILD GEESE 

Over my home-sick head. 

High in the paling light 

And touched with the sunset's glow, 

Soaring and strong and free, 

The unswerving phalanx sweeps, 

The honking wild geese go, — 

Go with a flurry of wings 

Home to their norland lakes 

And the sedge-fringed tarns of peace 

And the pinelands soft with Spring! 

I cannot go as the geese go, 

But into the steadfast North, 
90 



THE WILD GEESE 9^ 

The North that is dark and tender, 
My home-sick spirit wings, — 
Wings with a flurry of longing thoughts 
And nests in the tarns of youth. 



THE DAY 

I 

Dewy^ dewy lawn-slopes, 

Is this the day she comes ? 

O wild-flower face of Morning, 

Must you never wake? 

Silvery, silvery sea-line, 

Does she come to-day? 

O murmurous, murmurous birch-leaves, 

Beneath your whispering shadow 

She will surely pass; 

And thrush beneath the black-thorn 

And white-throat in the pine-top, 
92 



THE DAY 93 

Sing as you have never sung, 
For she will surely come! 

II 

The lone green of the lawn-slope, 
The grey light on the sky-line, 
The mournful stir of birch-leaves, 
The thin note of the brown thrush, 
And the call of troubled white-throats 
Across the afternoon! — 
Ah, Summer now is over. 
And for us the season closed. 
For she who came an hour ago 
Has gone again — 
Has gone! 



THE REVOLT 

God knows that I've tinkled and jingled and 

strummed, 
That I've piped it and jigged it until I'm fair 

sick of the game, 
That I've given them slag and wasted the silver 

of song, 
That I've thrown them the tailings and they've 

taken them up content ! 
But now I want to slough off the bitterness born 

of it all, 
I want to throw off the shackles and chains of 

time, 

I want to sit down with my soul and talk straight 

out, 
94 



THE REVOLT 95 

I want to make peace with myself, 
And say what I have to say, 
While still there is time! 

Yea, I will arise and go forth, I have said, 
To the uplands of truth, to be free as the wind. 
Rough and unruly and open and turbulent- 
throated ! 
Yea, I will go forth and fling from my soul 
The shackles and chains of song! 

But, lo, on my wrists are the scars, 
And here on my ankles the chain-galls. 
And the cell-pallor, see, on my face! 
And my throat seems thick with the cell-dust, 
And for guidance I grope to the walls. 
And after my moment of light 



96 OPEN WATER 

I want to go back to the Dark, 
Since the Open still makes me afraid, 
And silence seems best in the sun. 
And song in the dusk ! 



ATAVISM 

I FEEL all primal and savage to-day. 

I could eat and drink deep and love strong 

I could fight and exult and boast and be glad! 

I could tear out the life of a wild thing and laugh 

at it! 
I could crush into panting submission the breast 

of a woman 
A-stray from her tribe and her smoke-stained 

tent-door ! 

I could glory in folly and fire and ruin, 

And race naked-limbed with the wind, 

And slink on the heels of my foes 

97 



98 OPEN WATER 

And dabble their blood on my brows — 
For to-day I am sick of it all, 
This silent and orderly empty life, 
And I feel all savage again 1 



MARCH TWILIGHT 
Black with a batter of mud 
Stippled with silvery pools 
Stands the pavement at the street-end; 
And the gutter snow is gone 
From cobble and runnelling curb; 
And no longer the ramping wind 
Is rattling the rusty signs; 
And moted and soft and misty 
Hangs the sunlight over the cross-streets, 
And the home-bound crowds of the city 
Walk in a flood of gold. 

And suddenly out of the dusk 

There comes the ancient question : 

99 



100 OPEN WATER 

Can it be that I have lived 
In earHer worlds unknown? 
Or is it that somewhere deep 
In this husk that men call Me 
Are kennelled a motley kin 
I never shall know or name, — 
Are housed still querulous ghosts 
That sigh and awaken and move, 
And sleep once more? 



THE ECHO 

I 

I AM only a note in the chorus, 

A leaf in the fluttering June, 

A wave on the deep. 

These things that I struggle to utter 

Have all been uttered before. 

In many another heart 

The selfsame song was born, 

The ancient ache endured, 

The timeless wonder faced, 

The unanswered question nursed, 

The resurgent hunger felt, 

And the eternal failure known ! 

lOI 



102 OPEN WATER 

II 

But glad is the lip of its whisper; 

The wave, of its life ; 

The leaf, of its lisp; 

And glad for its hour is my soul 

For its echo of godlier music, 

Its fragment of song! 



AUTUMN 

The thin gold of the sun lies slanting on the hill ; 

In the sorrowful greys and muffled violets of the 
old orchard 

A group of girls are quietly gathering apples. 

Through the mingled gloom and green they 
scarcely speak at all, 

And their broken voices rise and fall unutterably 
sad. 

There are no birds, 

And the goldenrod is gone. 

And a child calls out, far away, across the au- 
tumn twilight; 
And the sad grey of the dusk grows slowly 
deeper. 

And all the world seems old ! 

103 



FACES 

I TIRE of these empty masks, 

These faces of city women 

That seem so vapid and well-controlled. 

I get tired of their guarded ways 

And their eyes that are always empty 

Of either passion or hate 

Or promise or love, 

And that seem to be old 

And are never young! 

I think of the homelier faces 

That I have seen, 

The vital and open faces 

In the by-ways of the world: 

A Polish girl who met 
104 



FACES 105 

Her lover one wintry morning 
Outside the gaol at Ossining; 
A lean young Slav violinist 
And the steerage women about him, 
Held by the sound of his music; 
A young and deep-bosomed Teuton 
Suckling her shawl-wrapped child 
On a grey stone bridge in Detmold; 
A group of girls from Ireland, 
Crowding the steps of a colonist-car 
And singing half -sadly together 
As their train rocked on and on 
Over the sun-bathed prairie ; 
A mournful Calabrian mother 
Standing and staring out 
Past the mists of Ischia 
After a fading steamer; 



^0^ OPEN WATER 

A Nautch girl held by a sailor 
Who'd taken a knife from her fingers 
But not the fire from her eyes; 
And a silent Sicilian mother 
Standing alone in the Marina 
Awaiting her boy who had been 
Long years away! — 
These I remember! 
And of these 
I never tire! 



THERE IS STRENGTH IN THE SOIL 

There is strength in the soil ; 
In the earth there is laughter and youth. 
There is solace and hope in the upturned loam. 
And lo, I shall plant my soul in it here like a 

seed! 
And forth it shall come to me as a flower of 

song; 

For I know it is good to get back to the earth 

That is orderly, placid, all-patient! 

It is good to know how quiet 

And noncommittal it breathes. 

This ample and opulent bosom 

That must some day nurse us all ! 

107 



LIFE-DRUNK 

On opal Aprlllan mornings like this 

I seem dizzy and drunk with life. 

I waken and wander and laugh in the sun; 

With some mystical knowledge enormous 

I lift up my face to the light. 

Drunk with a gladness stupendous I seem; 

With some wine of Immensity god-like I reel ; 

And my arm could fling Time from His throne; 

I could pelt the awed taciturn arch 

Of Morning with music and mirth; 

And I feel, should I find but a voice for my 

thought, 

That the infinite orbits of all God's loneliest stars 
io8 



LIFE-DRUNK 1^9 

That are weaving vast traceries out on the fringes 

of Night 
Could never stand more than a hem on the robe 

of my Song! 



MY HEART STOOD EMPTY 

My heart stood empty and bare, 

So I hung it with thoughts of a woman. 

The remembered ways of this woman 

Hung sweet in my heart. 

So I followed where thought should lead, 

And it led to her feet. 

But the mouth of this woman was pain, 

And the love of this woman, regret; 

And now only the thought 

Of all those remembered thoughts 

Of remembered ways, 

Is shut in my heart ! 



no 



ONE NIGHT IN THE NORTHWEST 

When they flagged our train because of a broken 

rail, 
I stepped down out of the crowded car, 
With its clamour and dust and heat and babel of 

broken talk. 
I stepped out into the cool, the velvet cool, of 

the night, 
And felt the balm of the prairie-wind on my face. 
And somewhere I heard the running of water, 
I felt the breathing of grass. 
And I knew, as I saw the great white stars. 
That the world was made for good ! 



Ill 



DREAMERS 

T KERENS a poet tombed in you, 
Man of blood and iron! 
There's a dreamer dead and buried 
Deep beneath your cynic frown, 
Deep beneath your toil ! 

And deep beneath my music, 
There's a strong man stirs in me ; 
There's a ghost of blood and granite 
Coffined in this madness 
Carpentered of Song! 

You live your day and drain it ; 
I weave my dream and lose it; 

112 



DREAMERS 1 13 

But the red blood lost in me awakens still at 

times, 
At all your city's sky-line, 
At all your roaring market-place. 
At all its hum of power — 
And the poet dead within you stirs 
Still at the plaintive note or two 
Of a dreamer's plaintive song! 



THE QUESTION 

I 

Glad with the wine of life, 

Reeling I go my way, 

Drunk with the ache of living 

And mouthing my drunken song! 

Then comes the lucid moment 

And the shadow across the lintel; 

And I hear the ghostly whisper, 

And I glimpse with startled eyes 

The Door beyond the doorway. 

And I see the small dark house 

Where I must sleep. 
114 



THE QUESTION II5 

II 

Then song turns sour on my lips, 
And the warmth goes out of my blood, 
And I turn me back to the beaker, 
And re-draining my cup of dream, 
I drown the whispering voices, 
I banish the ghostly question 
As to which in the end is true : 
The wine and the open road? 
Or the waiting Door? 



THE GIFT OF HATE 

Empty it seems, at times, their cry about Love, 

Their claim that love is the only thing that sur- 
vives. 

For I who am born of my centuries strewn with 
hate. 

Who was spewed into life from a timeless tangle 
of sin, 

I can hate as strong and as long as I love ! 

There are hours and issues I hate; 

There are creeds and deeds and doubts I hate; 

There are men I hate to the uttermost ; 

And although in their graves they listen and 

weep, 
ii6 



THE GIFT OF HATE H? 

Earth's mothers and wistful women who cried 

for peace, 
I hate this King of Evil who has crowned my 

heart with Hate! 



THE DREAM 

I LAY by your side last night. 

By you, in my dreams, 

I felt the damp of the grave. 

I was dead with you — 

And my bones still ache with Death. 

For my hand went out and I touched your lips, 

And I found them fallen away, 

Wasted and lost! 

Those lips once warm with life 

Were eaten and gone! 

And my soul screamed out in the dark 

At the intimate blackness of Death. 

And then I arose from the dead 
ii8 



THE DREAM 119 

And returned to the day; 

And my bones and my heart still ache with it all, 

And I hunger to hear the relieving babble of life, 

The crowd in the hurrying street, 

The tumult and laughter and talk. 

To make me forget! 



ONE ROOM IN MY HEART 

One room in my heart shall be closed, I said ; 
One chamber at least in my soul shall be secret 

and locked! 
I shall hold it my holy of holies, and no one shall 

know it! 
But you, calm woman predestined, with casual 

hands, 
You came with this trivial key, 
And ward by obdurate ward the surrendering 

lock fell back. 
And disdainfully now you wander and brood and 

wait 
In this room that I thought was my own ! 

T20 



/ 



THE MEANING 

It isn't the Sea that I love, 

But the ships 

That must dare and endure and defy and sur- 
vive it! 

It isn't the flesh that I love, 

But the spirit 

That guides and derides and controls and out- 
lives it! 

It isn't this earth that I love, 

But the mortals 

Who give to it meaning and colour and passion 
and life! 

For what is the Sea without ships ? 

And what is the flesh without soul? 

And what is a world without love? 

121 



THE VEIL 

You have said that I sold 
My life for a song; 
Laid bare my heart 
That men might listen 
And go their ways — 
My inchoate heart 
That I dare not plumb, 
That goes unbridled 
To the depths of Hell, 
That sings in the sun 
To the brink of Heaven! 
I have tossed you the spindrift 
Born of its fretting 



12? 



THE VEIL 123 

On its shallowest coast, 
But over the depths of it 
Bastioned in wonder 
And silent with fear 
God sits with mei 



THE MAN OF DREAMS 

All my lean life 

I garnered nothing but a dream or two. 

These others gathered harvests 

And grew fat with grain. 

But no man lives by bread, 

And bread alone. 

So, forgetful of their scorn, 

When starved, they cried for life, 

I gave them my last dreams, 

I bared for them my heart, 

That they might eat ! 



124 



APRIL ON THE RIALTO 

A CANYON of granite and steel, 

A river of grim unrest, 

And over the fever and street-dust 

Arches the azure of dream. 

And fretting along the tumult. 

Threading the iron curbs, 

Tawdry in tinsel and feather 

Drift the daughters of pleasure. 

The sad-eyed traders in song, 

The makers of joy. 

The Columbines of the city 

Seeking their ends ! 

But under the beaded eye-lash, 



125 



126 OPEN WATER 

Under the lip with its rouge, 
Under the mask of white 
Splashed with geranium-red, 
As God's own arch of azure 
Leans softly over the street, 
Surely, this day, runs warmer 
The blood through a wasted breast ! 



THE SURRENDER 

Must I round my life to a song, 

As the waves wear smooth the shore-stone? 

Shall the mortal beat and throb 

Of this heart of mine 

Be only to crumble a dream, 

And fashion the pebbles of fancy, 

That the tides of time may cover. 

Or a child may find? 

Little in truth it matters; 

But this at the most I know: 

Infinite is the ocean 

That thunders upon man's soul. 

And the sooner the soul falls broken. 

The smoother will be its song ! 

127 



THE PASSING 

Ere the thread is loosed, 

And the sands run low, 

And the last hope fails, 

Wherever we fare, 

O Fond and True, 

May it fall that we come in the end. 

Come back to the crimson valleys, 

Back to the Indian Summer, 

Back to the northern pine-lands, 

And the grey lakes draped with silence. 

And the sunlight thin and poignant, 

And the leaf that flutters earthward, 

And the skyline green and lonely, 
128 



THE PASSING I29 

And the ramparts of the dead world 

Ruddy with wintry rose! 

May we fare, O Fond and True, 

Through our soft-houred Indian Summer, 

Through the pahng twiHght weather, 

And facing the lone green uplands. 

And greeting the sun-warmed hills, 

Step mto the pineland shadows 

And enter the sunset valley 

And go as the glory goes 

Out of the dreaming autumn, 

Out of the drifting leaf 

And the dying light! 



PROTESTATIONS 

If I tire of you, beautiful woman, 

I know that the fault is mine ; 

Yet not all mine the failure 

And not all mine the loss ! 

In loveliness still you walk; 

But I have walked with sorrow! 

I have threaded narrows, 

And I have passed through perils 

That you know nothing of! 

And I in my grief have gazed 

In eyes that were not yours ; 

And my emptier hours have known 

The sigh of kindlier bosoms, 
130 



PROTESTATIONS 13^ 

The kiss of kindlier mouths! 
Yet the end of all is written, 
And nothing, O rose-leaf woman, 
You ever may dream or do 
Henceforth can bring me anguish 
Or crown my days with joy! 

Three tears, O stately zvoman, 
You said could float your soid, 
So little a thing it seemed! 
Yet all that's left of life 
Fd give to know your love, 
I'd give to show my love, 
And feel your kiss again! 



I SAT IN THE SUNLIGHT 

I SAT in the sunlight thinking of Hfe; 

I sat there, dreaming of Death. 

And a moth aht on the sun-dial's face, 

And the birds sang sleepily. 

And the leaves stirred, 

And the sun lay warm on the hills, 

And the afternoon grew old. 

So, some day I knew the birds would sing, 

And the leaves would stir, 

And the afternoon grow old — 

And I would not be there. 

And the warmth went out of the day. 

And a wind blew out of the West where I sat. 

And the birds were still ! 
132 



\^ H 70 86 




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